Left, Cher performs on stage at Rogers Arena on Friday, while, above, Cyndi Lauper performs old hits such as True Colors, Girls Just Want to Have Fun and Time After Time as the opening act for the 68-year-old singer.Gerry Kahrmann
/ PNG

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How do you define an artist who has won more than 285 awards in her career, including an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, three Golden Globes and a best actress award at Cannes, not to mention scoring four No. 1 hits on the Billboard charts.

At 68, Cher could still aim for that Tony and try to score the grand slam EGOT and round the bases.

Friday night at Rogers Arena Cher came to say goodbye — again.

It wasn’t her first “farewell” to Vancouver. In fact, Cher has been saying farewell on and off for about a decade, always finding a way to return, looking as great as ever, to give her fans one more round.

That said, you have to wonder if fans are feeling a little farewell fatigued.

Scalpers hovered like buzzards around the gates at Rogers Arena minutes before the start of Cher’s final Dressed 2 Kill tour date in Canada, frantically trying to off-load extra tickets at 10 bucks a pop. Inside, fans talked about how they had bought their tickets at a discount online.

Still, the place was pretty much packed by the time ’80s icon Cyndi Lauper took to the stage to open the proceedings.

Wearing a Mountie outfit, Lauper sauntered through the crowd and hopped on the stage to sing her hit She Bop, playing a funky flute interlude.

The New York City-based singer — when not gleefully dropping F-bombs and reminiscing about spending a summer in the Canadian forest as a youth getting bitten by black flies — devoted most of her set to revisiting her 30-year-old classic album She’s So Unusual, including All Through The Night, which she dedicated to Cher.

“She’s got an EGO, but I ain’t no slouch either,” Lauper said, pointing out she has claimed Grammys and Tonys of her own.

What the set lacked in flexibility (Lauper confined to the front of the stage with her band), it made up for in hilarity and emotion and raw power, the red-haired singer cracking wise between songs and revisiting anecdotes from her career that had the crowd in stitches, singing a party-starting Girls Just Wanna Have Fun sporting a Canucks jersey, and dedicating True Colors to her LGBT fans and to Canada’s open-minded attitude toward gay marriage.

Cher’s performance, on the other hand, was an elaborate display that took fans on an aural and visual trip down memory lane.

With a state of the art stage design that changed depending on the era, it was eye candy and glitter galore throughout.

Opening with a recording of her 2013 single a Woman’s World, from her 25th studio album Closer To The Truth, Cher sounded and looked nowhere near her age of 68. (Some tape playback did help Cher sound her best at the start as she stood atop a large pillar.)

Garbed in a glittery Cleopatra style outfit and giant feathery headdress, Cher followed up with Strong Enough and reminded fans that reinvention is a Cher trademark, a song featured on her 1998 album Believe (whose title track would come later in the set), a record that brought Cher back to the top of the charts in the late ’90s.

Backed by a small army of dancers, live five-piece band and two backup singers, Cher quickly found her groove. Her voice quickly found her true form, a booming presence that filled the room.

“It’s nothing, OK! I love to start my shows standing atop of a pillar wearing nothing but dental floss for an outfit — at 68,” Cher said, the crowd loving every moment.

“What is your grandma doing tonight?”

She acknowledged her last farewell tour 11 years ago, talking about how she has done everything from dressing as a “transvestite piñata” to “pissing off every female singer” out there between sips of her favourite Dr Pepper.

“This is my farewell tour. I’m never coming back. I swear to God,” she said, winking at the crowd and walking away with fingers crossed behind her back.

Before “the end” Cher would serve up a vampy Dressed To Kill and travel back in time to the days of Sonny and Cher (The Beat Goes On, I Got You Babe, featuring retro set design and Sonny Bono via video). She would go from circus to burlesque to spartan themes with a Cirque du Soleil twist (Take It Like A Man featured a gigantic golden Trojan horse), and with crisp video backgrounds designed by Vancouver’s Cole Walliser (Katy Perry, P!nk).

She would also squeeze You Haven’t Seen The Last Of Me in the middle of her set for good measure, just as a reminder that it’s never really over until it’s over.

And she would also squeeze herself into a slightly modified version of her If I Could Turn Back Time outfit, for one last time.

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